At Wadsworth, Truckee Valley is entered, green with the joy of exuberant nature, which we follow until Truckee City, a gem of the Sierras, is gained, and realize that we have now to climb over the second ridge of the continent, the ragged ribs that flank the great water-shed of the three Americas. Truckee is not only a pretty village, nestling on the snowy bosom of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, but it is the center of a lake region, wherein abound some of the most remarkable bodies of water to be found on the globe. Fourteen miles towards the south is California’s favorite resort, Lake Tahoe, a really marvelous sheet of crystalline water that, from the mountain peaks which enclose it, looks like a colossal beryl that through some disturbment has been rolled out of the sky and found lodgment in the great lap of the Sierras. The environs of the lake are wondrously grand, and the air a very enchantment, so great is its exhilaration. The lake is twenty-two miles long, ten miles wide, and 1,700 feet deep, while the surface is 6,247 feet above sea level, and it is, as Mark Twain eloquently describes it, “a sea in the clouds; a sea that has character, and asserts it at times in solemn calms, and again in savage storms; a sea whose royal seclusion is guarded by a cordon of sentinel peaks that lift their frosty fronts 9,000 feet above the level world; a sea whose every aspect is impressive, whose belongings are beautiful, whose lonely majesty types the Deity.” Tahoe’s waters abound with trout and other fish, whose bodies flash the sunlight from a depth of thirty feet. The waters are so cold that decomposition is arrested below the surface. Many persons have been drowned in the lake, but not one has ever been recovered, when the accident occurred in deep water. So pellucid are its waters that a boat gliding along the surface appears to be passing through the air, and from the prows of swift-moving crafts, sheets of clearest glass seem to be rolling away. Many beautiful cottages are built along the shore, the summer homes of wealthy Californians, and in season the lake is animate with boats and the beach alive with pleasure parties. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: THE BROW OF EL CAPITAN GIRDLED WITH CLOUDS.—This is one of the grandest and most beautiful views of Yosemite scenery that we have ever had the pleasure of beholding. El Capitan, or, as we should say in plain English, and certainly much more expressively, “The Captain,” lifts his haughty head 3300 feet above the valley, and calmly surveys the surrounding landscape as if he had a right to command it. Our photographers were fortunate in being able to procure such a splendid representation of cloud effects as are shown along the brow of the mountain in this picture. ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: